The Myopic View:
If I can charge my customers more for the same product (or give my customers less for the same old price), then I can make more money.

Also, if I make my labor force "more efficient", I'll need fewer employees, so I'll be able to keep more money.

Yay!  More money!  Go me!


The Macroscopic View:
If all the products cost more (or give less quantity for the same money), people can't afford to buy as much.  

If more people are out of work because all the companies have laid off their employees in the name of increased profit margins, people can't afford to buy anything.

Now no one can afford to buy your overpriced products and you all go out of business.  You're so clever!

But there's always bail-outs!

CNN reports: Sen. Barack Obama will take a break from campaigning Thursday so he can visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii, an Obama spokesman said Monday.

"Sen. Obama's grandmother Madelyn Dunham has always been one of the most important people in his life," spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Fox News reports: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is canceling nearly all his campaign events Thursday and Friday to visit his suddenly gravely ill 85-year-old grandmother in Hawaii, a spokesman said.

Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Obama's plane that Madelyn Payne Dunham, who helped raise Obama, was released from the hospital late last week. But he said her health had deteriorated "to the point where her situation is very serious."

Let's compare and contrast:

CNN calls it "will take a break from campaigning" while Fox News says, "is canceling nearly all his campaign events."  Which one sounds pointed?

CNN attributes this break to "visit his ailing grandmother" while Fox News says, "to visit his suddenly gravely ill 85-year-old grandmother."  Which one sounds condescendingly like a lazy person calling out of work?

Both refer to Obama spokesman, Robert Gibbs' comments regarding his grandmother.  But which one sounds like Obama is just making stuff up?

There you have it, folks!  Definitive proof that Fox News is "fair and balanced," while CNN is clearly the "liberal mainstream media".

You assholes.  Dude's gramma is sick.  Kind of reminds me of the last time Obama went to visit his grandmother and McCain tried to paint him as an elitist, accusing him of taking a "vacation on a private beach in Hawaii".  Ooh...he visits his grandmother...he's so elite! (or a slacker, dependent upon which source you trust more: Dumb or Dumber)

Update: My mother's implication (most likely obtained from FOX News, since it's her only source of information) is that he had to make up an excuse to go look for his birth certificate because he was really born in Kenya.

Update 2: 11/02/08, Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has succumbed to cancer.  She passed away in her sleep just before midnight.  FOX News and my mom are assholes for politicizing this.

Two blogs in a day?  Holy crap!  What is this, 2003?

So I'm reading these articles on cnn.com, foxnews.com, msnbc.com and usatoday.com.  They're all talking about how McCain is scrambling to win back states that typically go "red", which Obama is currently leading (some by so many points that electoral maps like those on cnn.com and usatoday.com are already declaring them for Obama.

They keep referring to these states as "ones that haven't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in more than four decades," or "in decades," or "for many decades."  The closest they've come to outright saying it was, "...since 1964."  When will somebody fess up!?  Since the Civil Rights Act was signed!

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood beside President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and saw the Civil Rights Act, originally proposed by President Kennedy, signed into law.  On that day, Johnson remarked of the impact it would have on the Democratic party, "We've just lost the South for a generation."

Once the party of segregationists like Orrin Hatch and George McGovern, the Democrats made a giant step to the other side of the fence.  In the vein of true partisanship, the "Party of Lincoln," was there to accept the votes of angry racists, furious with their party for integrating the South.

Eventually, the Republican party became so well known as the home for racist Americans, that 3% of black people in America favor the Republican candidate for president.  If I had a nickel for every time I saw George Bush put his arm around a smiling black man, or every time the Republican convention camera's focused exclusively on a black delegate...They try so hard to not be too obvious.

Well folks, it's been 44 years.  Maybe a little longer than President Johnson expected a generation to last, but the pendulum is finally swinging back.  The irony is that it took a black presidential nominee to make it happen.  Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Nevada and Ohio, all won by Bush in 2004, are now up for grabs or seeing Barack Obama take considerable leads.

My, how the worm has turned.

My company just moved, adding an hour to my commute, each way, so I get to work from home some days.  Last week, I worked from home on Wednesday and Friday, and Thursday was Yom Kippur, so I haven't been in the office since last Tuesday (one week ago, today, since yesterday was Columbus Day).

I walk in today, the first one in the door, and I find that my mouse is gone, my broadband connection has been unplugged and my desk is covered in various and sundry crap - it's just become the receptacle for all sorts of nick-knacks in my absence. 

What.  The fuck.